Decker powers Pennington boys' soccer

PENNINGTON — The directive that Pennington boys’ soccer coach Chad Bridge delivered to his team at the half of yesterday’s showdown with rival Blair was a simple one: play faster, anticipate more astutely.

The Red Raiders heeded their coach’s words immediately as standout senior Ethan Decker delivered three goals over the first 2:57 of the second half and finished with four tallies for the game to highlight Pennington’s 7-0 thrashing of Blair at The Pennington School.

“Ethan and I have always tried to take it to teams in the second half,” Pennington senior midfielder Patrik Devlin said. “If you look at the previous games, we’ve always had a better second half than the first half. I don’t know, I guess Mr. Bridge just gets us fired up to come out and score some goals.”

Henry Bonilla scored the first of his two goals just 7:35 into the contest, just one minute after entering the game for the first time.

“Ethan was coming down the line, and Pat and I each made runs at the post,” Bonilla, a senior midfielder from Fairless Hills, Pa., said. “It went through Pat, and I just finished it off.”

Decker found the scoring sheet for the first time just moments later, taking a pass from Marcus Bruccoleri — who also had just entered the game for the first time less than a minute before — and blasted it home into the bottom-left corner of the net.

Bonilla would give Pennington a 3-0 lead with 10:39 left in the first half off a cross from freshman midfielder Griffin Bull.

Despite the comfortable 3-0 lead at the break, with both the Mercer County Tournament and NJISAA Prep ‘B’ tournament on the horizon, Bridges implored his team to turn up the pace.

The University of North Carolina-bound Decker was happy to oblige.

Devlin and Decker combined for a double give-and-go that the standout senior from Manahawkin ripped home just eight seconds into the second half.

“I played it to Ethan, he played it back, I played a through ball and he went in and finished it off,” Devlin, who is back to 100 percent following offseason surgery for a herniated L5 disc in his back that forced him to miss the ever-important rising senior summer, he said.

Decker scored on a feed from Michael Bergen 1:35 later and found the back of the net on a pass from Anders Nillson 1:24 later to finish off the four-goal afternoon and push his total of tallies to 10 on the season.

“He came last year and, ever since, it’s been great playing with him,” Devlin said of Decker, who transferred to Pennington from Southern Regional prior to his junior year.

Satchel Cortet found the back of the twine with 53 seconds left to round out the scoring and to ensure Pennington its biggest goal differential of the season.

The Red Raiders limited the Buccaneers to just one shot on net, which didn’t come until 62:15 into the match.

“Our defense is usually solid, and they came out and did a similar job today,” Bonilla said.

Pennington hits the road tomorrow afternoon against rival PDS. A win should help the Red Raiders seal the No. 3 seed in the MCT in advance of Saturday’s qualification deadline.

“It’s always a great rivalry,” Devlin said, “so we’re looking to go out, have fun and get a win.”